Examined Life through the Scriptures

Jacob said to Joseph: ‘Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury in their burying place.’ Jacob dies. For Joseph, this was a journey to remember his father’s love and God’s mercy in their astonishing story. This is a sacred journey, it humbles us as this is the journey that all human beings have to remember. This journey - looking back in search of meaning and love - awaits for all of us.

This ‘sacred time’ in the Joseph-story is a kind of parallel with what we experience in the Eucharistic Presence. The prayer of the adult psyche contains this ‘josephian’ remembrance. In the Eucharist, our Lord’s presence is so intense, that, as part of our prayer, we are prompted to process our past. This is the specific time experience of the Eucharistic adoration’. In it, we undergo a purifying journey. We are swimming back in time. It is a purifying journey; it leads to conversion and determination to amend our ways.

This is not merely a personal journey. Praying in the presence of the Eucharist is far more than individual reflection. This ‘journey with Joseph’ is sacred in the collective sense, too. When carried away, backwords in time, by God’s love - we remember with the determination to amend history’s ways. This time-experience is akin to when we see the astronauts in free-fall. They levitate in space; we are levitating in time. Within history itself.

In the trial-scene of Jesus, we see the opposite of this sacred (healing) journey. The protagonists of this drama ignore God’s presence. Their heart is, as it were, evacuated from this Presence. Abandoning their co-journey with the Divine Shekinah (God’s glory), they violate the commandments of preserving Life. Their ‘humane’ memory is blot out… Judas, Jesus’ betrayer, commits suicide. The others (religious and political leaders) facilitate a national and religious tragedy. The ways of human history get totally lost if we are not journeying together, if we are not remembering the sacred Presence. How our life is embedded in God’s care and in conversion.